Head On (DVD)

Director Fatih Akin, a Turk born and brought up in Germany, won a shelf-ful of prizes for this film, including the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival 2004. As a film, it will leave you emotionally wrung out, and portrays both the intense highs and the deep lows that come of falling to pieces, and how it feels to have no sense of belonging: two people who want to live but can't quite work out how, and how they could find out who they are together, ...
...alone.

"What's the story?"

It might seem the film it has reached its low point right at the beginning, when Cahit (Birol Unel), a 40-odd year old Turk living in Germany, drives his car into a wall in an alcohol-fuelled suicide attempt. Recovering in the psychatric ward, he meets Sibel (Sibel Kekilli), who keeps staging attention-seeking suicide attempts in just-out-of-teenage acts of defiance against her overbearing ... more

Director Fatih Akin, a Turk born and brought up in Germany, won a shelf-ful of prizes for this film, including the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival 2004. As a film, it will leave you emotionally wrung out, and portrays both the intense highs and the deep lows that come of falling to pieces, and how it feels to have no sense of belonging: two people who want to live but can't quite work out how, and how they could find out who they are together, if only the rest of the world would leave them alone.

"What's the story?"

It might seem the film it has reached its low point right at the beginning, when Cahit (Birol Unel), a 40-odd year old Turk living in Germany, drives his car into a wall in an alcohol-fuelled suicide attempt. Recovering in the psychatric ward, he meets Sibel (Sibel Kekilli), who keeps staging attention-seeking suicide attempts in just-out-of-teenage acts of defiance against her overbearing traditional (also Turkish) family. On discovering Cahit is Turkish, she proposes marriage - her family want her to marry a Turkish man - and mostly to stop her relentlessly asking, Cahit gives in, scrapes through the interview with her father and brothers, and the two of them go through a fake marriage.

They reach an uneasy truce, living more like flatmates - Sibel going out and partying like there's no tomorrow: drink, drugs and sex; Cahit watches her and begins to admire and fall for her spirit - and he starts to get jealous. Eventually, Sibel falls for him too, but can the two of them manage to build a life of freedom without the destructive tendencies they have almost come to rely on?

"Sounds hellish... why watch it?"

This film is saved from being pure despair by the strength of the acting, you come to care about these two people who seem hell-bent on wrecking their lives, and really rooting for them when they try to make things work - there are some genuinely uplifting moments, even if they do come few and far between.

The actors are also Turks born and brought up in Germany: Birol Unel gives an amazing performance as Cahit; newcomer Sibel Kekilli does the going off the rails act with an assurance that suggests experience (when it was reported she had previously been in porn films, her family disowned her, just as the family of her character in the film disown her when her wild lifestyle comes to light); but later scenes show she can also act as a calmer character.

There are also some moments of extreme levity; the film does however have even lower moments than the ones described above, but I don't wish to give away the entire film: there is plenty that is shocking, and what is shown in the way of sex and violence may seem gratutious, but it is all essential to the plot, even if the plot is admittedly rather messy. It does however feel very real - from the Turkish men who extol their wives' fidelity even as they boast of their own visits to prosititutes (and hurriedly switch to talking about football when one of the wives walks in - we then see all the women chatting to each other about how terrible their men are in bed), to the goings-on in the seedier back streets of Istanbul, where some of the later scenes of the film take place.

The soundtrack to the film is mostly loud, and very, very good.

"This is a weird foreign film, isn't it?"

Even if you're not a diaspora Turk, most people have felt like, if not experienced, going off the rails at some point or other in their lives; these are characters that, often due to the acting, you can identify with at least in part.

One difficulty is the subtitles - the language in the film goes back and forth between Turkish and German, the subtitles never indicating when which is used. (I can get by in both languages, and found charting the change in language a very interesting part of the film, unfortunately this means I can't tell how much is lost by the subtitles).

The film is broken up into acts, inbetween each a Turkish singer and her band are by the Golden Horn in Istanbul singing traditional songs about doomed love. This serves both as a commentary on the film and also a much-needed bit of alienation - bringing you out of the action for a gasp of fresh air and reminding you that this is only a film. Or a weird foreign film, if you'd rather.

It's going relatively cheap on Amazon at the moment; or perhaps this might be one you would prefer to rent as it is not the sort of movie you would want to pull out and watch time and time again, however for one watch it is an amazing piece of work. There are some extras on the DVD - interviews and commentaries, but the film is a dramatic piece of social commentary that stands up very well on its own without extra explanation, and for a two hour film the time goes by fast. Put it on a large screen and crank the volume up for best effect.

This film is exhilarating, shocking, and a wild emotional roller-coaster of a ride: head-on and in-your-face all the way through. Gritty and real and well worth seeing, there isn't another film quite like this one.  

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